Search results

At a conference organised by the Council of Polytechnic Librarians Acquisitions Group in 1985, the need for a single and more generally based organisation was debated. Such a body was envisaged as a forum for discussion concerning the acquisition of library materials and systems between all those involved in their supply and purchase.

Although working in academic library acquisitions departments since 1974, the first meeting I remember being organised specifically for acquisitions librarians was the first Alan Armstrong acquisitions conference in November 1982. Until then, acquisitions librarians in my experience had only occasional contact with each other and the book trade through visits to and from their suppliers, and by attending general library conferences and exhibitions. Interesting and enjoyable as the Armstrong conferences were, public sector librarians balked increasingly at the cost — particularly as cuts in funding took effect on library budgets.

Borrowing from earlier contributions in the cross‐cultural management and international human resource management literatures, firstly we conceptualise expatriate adjustment as a multifaceted construct encompassing work, general, interaction and overall adjustment and then we examine the impact of work‐role characteristics in the form of role novelty, role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload on these different domains of adjustment. With respect to adjustment, while our data, drawn from a postal survey of US and Canadian expatriates on assignment in Ireland, show some variations in work, general, interaction and overall adjustment, the composite measure of overall adjustment reveals that, on the whole, respondents are well adjusted to working and living in Ireland. Turning to the impact of work‐role characteristics on adjustment domains, role novelty is positively correlated with work adjustment. Both role ambiguity and role conflict are negatively correlated with work adjustment. Multiple regression results reveal that, combined, role novelty, role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload account for 31.1 per cent of the variance in work adjustment, 13.4 per cent of the variance in general adjustment, 17.2 per cent in the case of interaction adjustment and 17.5 per cent of the variance in overall adjustment.

THE extraordinary general meeting of January 6 1982 called upon the LA Council to commission an independent management audit into the association's finances. This was to go much further than a mere accounting check. Since the LA already employs a firm of auditors, the same firm for sixty years, at a cost of £4590 in the year ended December 31 1980, many might have questioned the need for an additional audit.

I hope this headline can be accepted as factual and in no way racist. It introduces the idea of the Community Services Group and Commonwealth Institute Library Services. They are running a recruitment day for black library workers on 22 January 1987, when it is hoped that library schools, library employers, publishers and booksellers, schools careers officers and sixth formers can be brought together. The intention is to give black youngsters and their advisers an idea of what working in a library or information organisation entails, what qualifications and training are needed, and the career prospects. How does all this differ in any way from a recruitment day for while library workers? Much emphasis is laid on equal opportunities, so why not hold a recruitment day for library workers, of any colour? Details of the advertised session are available from Mary Hodge, Library Services, Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8 6NQ (Tel: 01–603 4535 ext. 215).

This paper reviews the needs of distance learners, and looks at ways in which the Internet can assist or obstruct service provision to off‐campus students. A hybrid approach is recommended. The Internet's impact on the role of librarians involved in supporting distance learners is briefly discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the experiences of setting up an institutional repository at Loughborough University, focusing on some of the key issues that it was necessary to consider, the choices made and the challenges overcome.

The paper outlines the various decision processes involved during the 12‐month pilot phase. These include: choosing appropriate software; customising DSpace; implementing licences; and gathering content for the repository.

The experiences highlight some of the challenges involved in setting up an institutional repository.

This paper gives a direct insight into the different types of work involved in the setting up of an institutional repository and is an example of a system set up outside the boundaries of project funding.

Tech aide to Romania Sighisoara, Romania, could become a hub of information for doctors and fanners all over Romania. A state‐of‐the‐art computing laboratory is being built there which, when finished, will house some 20 CD‐ROM drives and a library of databases on health, agriculture and nutrition. Because the laboratory is centrally located information will be disseminated from there to the rest of the country.

Paul Outlet. International organisation and dissemination of knowledge: selected essays of Paul Otlet translated and edited with an introduction by W. Boyd Rayward. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990. xi, 256 pp. $115.50/Dfl.225. 0 444 88678 8. (fid 684) Paul Otlet was born in Brussels in August 1868 and died there in December 1944. A lawyer who grew to be ‘bored with the law’ and became absorbed with books, libraries and information, he is probably principally remembered in connection with the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC).

In this chapter, we explore our academic mobility journeys – with particular consideration of the role of gender, class and sexual identity. The chapter takes shape as a dialogue, where together, we discuss the challenges and opportunities we encountered, the strategies we enacted and the successes we have had as scholars on the move. By having a conversation with an-Other about our mobile subjectivities, we hope to offer points of reflection for other international academics as they contemplate or negotiate their own movements.